I spent a lot of time when I was younger unsure of where I fit into my own fantasies.

Sometimes I wanted to hold her down and fuck her and sometimes I wanted to be her: held down and fucked. I wanted to feel her tight cunt around me and I desperately wanted to know what it felt like to have him slide inside me as I clenched.

I spent a lot of time in chat rooms, pretending to be her, talking to other men with the same fantasy. I listened to them describe what they wanted to do with my body, and I heard their fantasies over and over again. I let them use me, fuck me, and come inside me, all within the safe walls of made up spaces.

More often than not I pushed them further than they expected. Fuck me harder, I’d type. Let me feel your fingers around my neck as you slap my face and fuck my ass, and there would be silence on the other end. Was he sitting there, finally lost in jacking off, or did I go too far and he left for lighter pleasures?

The women I met online–many of whom I’m sure were also men–liked to fuck me as well, and I had more virtual lesbian sex than I ever did logged on as a straight man. We played with ourselves and with others, sometimes making the men simply listen as we licked and sucked each other to real orgasms.

It’s questionable that I learned anything of real value. It was playful and secret, and I admitted it to no one. But on those dark nights in my room with my cock in my hand, I jumped into the life of my made-up self and I was free and wild. I was temptation and I was fire.

And sometimes, when I’m alone on a chilly night in autumn, I find I miss the young woman that I was.